The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced exponential growth over the last few decades. In the course of IC evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased.
Flash technology has enabled designers to create cost effective and high performance programmable SOC (system on chip) solutions through the use of split-gate flash memory cells. The aggressive scaling of memory cells enables designing flash memories with very high memory array density.